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Dec. 27th, 2020 01:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppetComments on the Autistic!Grinch fic that I wrote for alexseanchai are really reinforcing the fact that "Disabled person gets their happy ending not by being made to do things the abled way, but by getting accommodations" is a story that really needs more telling. (Important note: For people with chronic pain, for example, "accommodations" is allowed to take the form of a magical cure of some variety, whereas for autistic folks, by contrast, accommodations might be neurotypical people doing things their way for once.) Naturally, my ADHD brain took one look at "happily-ever-after", and, of course, rushed to connect it to fairy tale retellings 😛
My first thought was a Cinderella who can't walk unaided for very long, and for whom climbing stairs can mean being stuck in bed for at least the next day.
Cinderella may have a congenital disability, or she may have been injured in whatever accident killed her father. I'm thinking that, regardless of the origin of her disability, her step-mother tells everyone she actually died with her father, because in this scenario one of the antagonizing forces is the step-mother's ablist dipshittery. Cinderella doesn't have to keep the house clean or anything, but she's not allowed to leave or have visitors. She does have a pair of canes she can use to get around the house, but her step-mother largely discourages her from using them, so Cinderella has to be sneaky about any "not strictly necessary" house-roaming. She relies a lot on books, socializing with her step-sisters, various artistic endeavors, and so forth, but she's still largely bored out of her skull.
Her house escape is aided by her canes getting a magical upgrade. (I haven't figured out how much I want any sort of fairy godmother to play a role in this. Is it better if Cinderella figures this out herself, or if she's just given something, to have life be extra easy for once?) In addition to their typical function, she can now stick them together to form a chair, and, when their magic is fully charged, she can use them to levitate for up to five minutes, thus bypassing stairs. The canes recharge on their own, but only when within, say, fifty feet of one another, which may have been the cost it took to make their magic permanent instead of just-until-midnight.
Cinderella makes it to the ball and has an actually lovely time. Something something with the prince or a different noble or something, eventually Cinderella has to leave, but she loses one of her canes in the process. The magic charge in the remaining cane is enough to get her most of the way home, at least, but she still ends up bedridden the next day or two from overdoing it on her trip home.
Something something with the beau searching for Cinderella, her step-mother tearing her a new one for sneaking out and embarrassing the family, maybe taking away some of her books or something, IDK. Cinderella is able to alert her beau to her whereabouts when the canes get close enough to each other and start recharging; she sends it out to alert her beau to her presence.
Cinderella and her beau live happily ever after, enacting many accessibility options and disability programs and stuff throughout the kingdom throughout their lives.
Other ideas so far are not nearly as well-developed.
* I'm thinking Beauty and the Beast where Beauty is either blind or Deaf? (I'm leaning towards blind, gotta be honest, but Deaf has potential as well.) Her dad picked the rose because it smelled heavenly, and was a very pretty color that he hadn't seen on a lot of roses. (Maybe Beauty has a gardening hobby and her dad stole an entire clipping?) When he tells her what happened at the Beast's castle and that the Beast is going to make him stay there forever as repayment for the theft of the rose/clipping, Beauty's like, Pfft, fuck that! I'll go. It won't matter to me how hideous this beast is, I can barely see more than blotchy colors anyway! While at the castle, she finds out that the castle's magic is very accommodating to her blindness, and the spirits or whatever are great at helping her navigate, and the magic can even read books to her! The Beast catches her attention when he stops being so much of a jerk and starts doing what he can to make it even easier for her to get around the castle, etc. (I'm kinda tempted to make the Beast autistic? But I'm very worried about the whole "Love is a cure for his beastliness!" thing and how to approach it so that it's not gross.)
* Snow White with chronic pain. Maybe the queen gets rid of her because negotiating with the country that supplied one of the chief ingredients for her pain meds was getting in the way of her agenda? Snow White somehow makes it to the home of the seven dwarves, who are pharmacists experimenting with various plants; they've got an apple tree whose fruit is even better for Snow White's pain than whatever the previous thing was. Wipes it completely out as long as she has one a day!And that's how it keeps the doctor away 😉 Not sure why the queen would target Snow White again, but she swaps out one of Snow's regular anti-pain apples for one that is supposed to kill her or something, only the dwarves are able to wrangle something at the last minute to put Snow in magical stasis instead. From there they work on a cure, possibly getting into contact with the country that supplied Snow's previous pain meds for help. Snow wakes up and makes the dwarves the official kingdom pharmacists, and makes sure that the anti-pain apples are available far and wide. Maybe also the apples also have a very slow curative effect, so after a few years of eating one a day she might not need them at all? And maybe not knowing to account for that is part of why Snow was not outright killed by the poisoned apple? Hmm.
* An alternate Snow White option might be Diabetic!Snow White, who gets put into a diabetic coma by the queen. Super Pharma Dwarves stay, though.
* Food Intolerance/Allergies Sleeping Beauty, maybe? In this case, she's not cursed, but the fairies reveal her intolerance at her birth, and the specific foodstuff is banished from the castle. Like Snow White, her sleeping ailment strikes when some appears at the castle and she takes a bite of it. (Assassination attempt, maybe?)
*I'm passingly aware of an actual, extant fairy tale about a girl who is fitted with magic silver prosthetic hands and marries a king, but it's been an age and a half since I read it.
Anyway, lots to think about.
alexseanchai are really reinforcing the fact that "Disabled person gets their happy ending not by being made to do things the abled way, but by getting accommodations" is a story that really needs more telling. (Important note: For people with chronic pain, for example, "accommodations" is allowed to take the form of a magical cure of some variety, whereas for autistic folks, by contrast, accommodations might be neurotypical people doing things their way for once.) Naturally, my ADHD brain took one look at "happily-ever-after", and, of course, rushed to connect it to fairy tale retellings 😛My first thought was a Cinderella who can't walk unaided for very long, and for whom climbing stairs can mean being stuck in bed for at least the next day.
Cinderella may have a congenital disability, or she may have been injured in whatever accident killed her father. I'm thinking that, regardless of the origin of her disability, her step-mother tells everyone she actually died with her father, because in this scenario one of the antagonizing forces is the step-mother's ablist dipshittery. Cinderella doesn't have to keep the house clean or anything, but she's not allowed to leave or have visitors. She does have a pair of canes she can use to get around the house, but her step-mother largely discourages her from using them, so Cinderella has to be sneaky about any "not strictly necessary" house-roaming. She relies a lot on books, socializing with her step-sisters, various artistic endeavors, and so forth, but she's still largely bored out of her skull.
Her house escape is aided by her canes getting a magical upgrade. (I haven't figured out how much I want any sort of fairy godmother to play a role in this. Is it better if Cinderella figures this out herself, or if she's just given something, to have life be extra easy for once?) In addition to their typical function, she can now stick them together to form a chair, and, when their magic is fully charged, she can use them to levitate for up to five minutes, thus bypassing stairs. The canes recharge on their own, but only when within, say, fifty feet of one another, which may have been the cost it took to make their magic permanent instead of just-until-midnight.
Cinderella makes it to the ball and has an actually lovely time. Something something with the prince or a different noble or something, eventually Cinderella has to leave, but she loses one of her canes in the process. The magic charge in the remaining cane is enough to get her most of the way home, at least, but she still ends up bedridden the next day or two from overdoing it on her trip home.
Something something with the beau searching for Cinderella, her step-mother tearing her a new one for sneaking out and embarrassing the family, maybe taking away some of her books or something, IDK. Cinderella is able to alert her beau to her whereabouts when the canes get close enough to each other and start recharging; she sends it out to alert her beau to her presence.
Cinderella and her beau live happily ever after, enacting many accessibility options and disability programs and stuff throughout the kingdom throughout their lives.
Other ideas so far are not nearly as well-developed.
* I'm thinking Beauty and the Beast where Beauty is either blind or Deaf? (I'm leaning towards blind, gotta be honest, but Deaf has potential as well.) Her dad picked the rose because it smelled heavenly, and was a very pretty color that he hadn't seen on a lot of roses. (Maybe Beauty has a gardening hobby and her dad stole an entire clipping?) When he tells her what happened at the Beast's castle and that the Beast is going to make him stay there forever as repayment for the theft of the rose/clipping, Beauty's like, Pfft, fuck that! I'll go. It won't matter to me how hideous this beast is, I can barely see more than blotchy colors anyway! While at the castle, she finds out that the castle's magic is very accommodating to her blindness, and the spirits or whatever are great at helping her navigate, and the magic can even read books to her! The Beast catches her attention when he stops being so much of a jerk and starts doing what he can to make it even easier for her to get around the castle, etc. (I'm kinda tempted to make the Beast autistic? But I'm very worried about the whole "Love is a cure for his beastliness!" thing and how to approach it so that it's not gross.)
* Snow White with chronic pain. Maybe the queen gets rid of her because negotiating with the country that supplied one of the chief ingredients for her pain meds was getting in the way of her agenda? Snow White somehow makes it to the home of the seven dwarves, who are pharmacists experimenting with various plants; they've got an apple tree whose fruit is even better for Snow White's pain than whatever the previous thing was. Wipes it completely out as long as she has one a day!
* An alternate Snow White option might be Diabetic!Snow White, who gets put into a diabetic coma by the queen. Super Pharma Dwarves stay, though.
* Food Intolerance/Allergies Sleeping Beauty, maybe? In this case, she's not cursed, but the fairies reveal her intolerance at her birth, and the specific foodstuff is banished from the castle. Like Snow White, her sleeping ailment strikes when some appears at the castle and she takes a bite of it. (Assassination attempt, maybe?)
*I'm passingly aware of an actual, extant fairy tale about a girl who is fitted with magic silver prosthetic hands and marries a king, but it's been an age and a half since I read it.
Anyway, lots to think about.
